Syria: Aleppo residents plead for help as fighting rages

Sept.25, Aleppo: Syrian civilians trapped in the besieged city of Aleppo have made desperate pleas for help, as warplanes pummelled rebel-held areas and deteriorating security conditions left two million people without access to safe drinking water.

Residents of rebel-held eastern Aleppo said "ferocious bombardment" by Syrian and Russian jets on Saturday had levelled neighbourhoods and killed at least 91 civilians.

"We don't have the equipment to pull the corpses out," a resident said, standing on the rubble of a destroyed building in the city's al-Bab district.

Describing the horror around him, he said an entire family was killed in a strike, with several people still lying under the debris.

"We are trying to help the injured, those who survived ... but the situation is catastrophic. Destruction and death, everywhere around us. It seems that the Russians and the regime have been given a green light to slaughter us all. As if starving the people here was not enough - it's now mass murder."

Speaking to Al Jazeera late on Saturday, Abdulkafi al-Hamdo, a professor at the University of Aleppo, said that residents were expecting another night of horror.

"What we are suffering can't be expressed by words in any language," he said.

"We don't have water to give our children … [Rescuers] can't help people anymore and the roads have been cut off by rubble. In the hospitals, there are three-four people on one bed, even in the intensive care units."

Another resident from the al-Mashhad district pleaded with the international community to save the more than 250,000 civilians stuck in besieged areas as air raids continued to flatten civilian areas.